I am a serial entrepreneur and professor turned venture capitalist. I led Computer Motion’s $110 million IPO and the $236 million sale of Expertcity (creator of GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting) to Citrix. I also contributed to CallWave’s IPO, sold a company I Co-founded to Coull and managed The Tearaways, a gifted power pop band. At Rincon Venture Partners, I am honored to work with some of the most talented startup operators on the planet.

Celebrities With The Most (Allegedly) Fake Twitter Followers

I was shocked by the headline: “71% Of President Barack Obama‘s Twitter Followers Are Fake.” By this measure, of the President’s nearly 19 million followers, 13.5 million are bogus. Irrespective of your political affiliation, one must admit that nearly three-fourths is an extremely high percentage of phony followers, causing some pundits to suggest that shenanigans may have been employed to bolster the President’s social status.

And The Most Authentic Twitter Personality Is…?

President Obama’s troubling Twitter follower score caused me to wonder to what degree other leading Twitter personalities’ followers were largely nonexistent. To this end, I used StatusPeople’s online tool, which estimates the percentage of followers which are: Fake, Inactive and Good.

The results were surprising. The arguably least-authentic personality on the list, Kim Kardashian, has the most legitimate followers of the Top 15 Tweeters, with 43% of her Twitter fans judged by StatusPeople to be real and active. Ms. Kardashian’s genuine percentage is more than double that of the lowest ranking member of the list, Shakira, with a paltry bona fide estimate of 21%. Even more disheartening, Ms. Authentic herself, Oprah Winfrey, per StatusPeople’s ranking, placed a mediocre tenth place, with only 26% of her followers extrapolated as real and active.

The following list is ranked from the highest to lowest percentage of real and active Twitter followers, not by each celebrity’s total followers.

StatusPeople notes that their results are inexact, as their algorithm samples a portion of a Tweeter’s followers and then extrapolates relative percentages across the entire data sample. In addition, pioneer Tweeters with longstanding Twitter accounts are more apt to have a higher percentage of inactive users. However, given that all of these are mature Twitter accounts, it is safe to assume that the results are accurate/inaccurate on a relative basis.

Where Do Fake Twitter Followers Come From?

There are a number of services which sell fake Twitter followers for the socially deficient. Prices range from $10 for 1,000 auto-generated Twitter followers to $1,350 for 1,000,000 counterfeit followers. The other source of fake followers are spam bots which follow users with the hope they will receive a reciprocal follow, which allows them to send spammy direct messages to the Tweeter.

At first glance, the extremely large percentage of inauthentic followers is rather astonishing, given that the average Twitter account has a fake percentage in the single digits. Yet, I am not suggesting that any of the above celebrities purchased bot Twitter followers, nor do I have any direct evidence that this is the case. Although one can imagine that the temptation to cheat is strong among handlers responsible for managing a celebrity’s social media network.

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I’m curious how many of these “fake” accounts following celebrities are actually fake, or people who tried out Twitter for the first and only time and simply followed a bunch of celebrities before giving up on the site.

Julie – I did mention Mr. Romney in the body of the article. He is not on the list because he is not one of the Top-15 Tweeters, as measured by total followers.

Politics aside, Mr. Romney does not have more “Good” followers than Ms. Kardashian, who, by my reckoning has ~ 6.8M “Good” followers. In contrast, Mr. Romney has about 1M total followers (Good, Fake and Inactive).

It’s pretty much wild open as to who can follow you on twitter. You have to keep a close eye on your follower counts and keep checking periodically for fakes to keep your list clean. Some of my friends use software like this http://tinyurl.com/ae5rynt to help with the task. I like to send personal tweets to my followers and if I get a response I know that they are real people. Hope that helps.

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